Several types of parking facilities exist with controlled access. For example, one type of parking facility involves having access controlled by a card actuated automatic gate; another type involves having a posted guard or attendant monitor entering and exiting vehicles. A given facility may issue daily tickets, accept monthly passes, or use other criteria for payment of parking fees.
A number of parking and ticketing systems exist in the marketplace, such as those sold under the names Amano, Skidata, IntgaPark, Federal APD, and the like. Each of these systems is designed to account for vehicles, tickets and revenue and allow or deny access or egress.
However, a common shortcoming in the prior art involves an inability to integrate a remote after hours let-out system with a let-out tracking system that reconciles the overnight activity with the opening and closing inventory records. This is just as important in both manual and automated facilities. In many cases, parking facilities are not manned around the clock. There then exists “overnight activity” that represents vehicles that were processed into the facility and were not processed out before the facility closed for the day. That overnight activity affects the overall daily inventory counts. This overnight activity creates a window of opportunity for attendants to falsify ticket count records and pocket the differences in cash. This can affect the net profit bottom line by hundreds of dollars daily.
In addition, parking patrons that are not monthly or access card authorized can still exit the facilities after closing by piggybacking other accountholders out, that is, by simply following them closely as they exit through a gate, or door thereby avoiding payment and adding to the confusion in ticket count reconciliation. To compound this problem, oftentimes parking patrons may be trapped in a facility after hours and demand that someone come to let them out. After waiting for an hour or more for a let-out attendant to arrive, few patrons are happy to pay an extra fee. Angry words and high emotions are commonplace in such instances.
There exists then a need for a centralized let-out system that can be operated remotely from a closed facility, i.e. after normal operating hours, that can: remotely operate the access/egress barriers; record the access/egress event by type; accept credit card (“CC”) payments on site with a self pay system or alternatively permit a let-out person take the CC information which is then tracked as an event into the system; video capture the event; allow a view of the event as it occurs; and enter the access/egress event into the opening and closing inventory records so as to close the hole in the inventory accounting records. While the foregoing refers to a credit card payment system, it will be understood that self-pay machines may also accept cash payments, and such cash payments are likewise tracked as an event into the system. Other payments methods can be employed, and the foregoing listing is exemplary.